CHAPTER
IX

HOW
THEY BROUGHT THE BAD NEWS FROM ARAGO TO QUINCAMPOIX: AND WHAT ACTION WAS TAKEN THEREUPON

JUST as Lord Antony Bowling turned into the Grands Boulevards
from the Faubourg Montmartre, Akbar Pasha was leaving them. The Turk did
not see the genially flourished cane; he was preoccupied -- and perhaps
he did not wish to be recognized. For he dodged among the obscure and
dangerous streets of "The Belly of Paris" with many a look
behind him. To be sure, this is but a reasonable precaution in a
district so favourable to Apache activities.
At last he came out into the great open square of the markets; and,
crossing obliquely, came to a drinking den of the type which seeks to
attract foreigners, preferably Americans. It bore the quite incongruous
name "Au Pere Tranquille." Akbar mounted the stairs. It was
too early for revellers; even the musicians had not arrived; but an old
man sat in one corner of the room, sipping a concoction of gin, whisky
and rum which goes in certain circles by the name of a Nantucket
Cocktail.

This individual was of some sixty years of age; his hair and
beard were white; his dress was that of a professional man, and he
endeavoured to give dignity to his appearance by the assumption of a
certain paternal or even patriarchal manner. But his eye was pale and
cold as a murderer's, shifty and furtive as a thief's. His hands
trembled continually [117] with a kind of palsy; and the white knuckles
told a tale of gout. Self-indulgence had bloated his body; unhealthy fat
was everywhere upon him.

The trembling of his hands seemed in sympathy with that of his
mind; one would have said that he was in deadly fear, or the prey to a
consuming anxiety.

At the Turk's entrance he rose clumsily, then fell back into his
chair. He was more than half intoxicated.

Akbar took the chair opposite to him. "We couldn't get
it," he said; in a whisper, though there was nobody within earshot.
"Oh, Dr. Balloch, Dr. Balloch! do try to understand! It was
impossible. We tried all sorts of ways."

The doctor's voice had a soft suavity. Though a licensed
physician, he had long since abandoned legitimate practice, and under
the guise of homeopathy pursued various courses which would have been
but ill regarded by more regular practitioners.

His reply was horrible, uttered as it was in feline falseness,
like a caress. "You foul ass!" he said. "I have to
take
this up with S.R.M.D., you know! What will he say and do?"

"I tell you I couldn't. There was an old man there who
spoilt everything, in my idea."

"An old man?" Dr. Balloch almost dropped his
hypocritical bedside voice in his rage. "Oh curse, oh curse it
all!" He leant over to the Turk, caught his beard, and deliberately
pulled it. There is no grosser insult that you can offer to a Mussulman,
but Akbar accepted it without resentment. Yet so savage was the assault
that a sharp cry of pain escaped him.

You dog! you Turkish swine!" hissed Balloch. "Do you
know what has happened? S.R.M.D. sent a Watcher -- a bit of himself, do
you understand what that means, you piece of dirt? -- and it hasn't
returned. It must have been killed, but we can't find out how, [118] and
S.R.M.D. is lying half dead in his house. You pig! Why didn't you come
with your storry at once? I know now what is wrong."

Balloch contemptuously released his victim -- who was a brave
enough man in an ordinary way, and would have had the blood of his own
Sultan, though he knew that the guards would cut him to pieces within
the next ten seconds, for the least of such words as had been addressed
to him. But Balloch was his Superior in the Black Lodge, which rules by
terror and by torture; its first principle was to enslave its members.
The bully Balloch became
a whimpering cur at the slightest glance of the dreaded S.R.M.D.

"Tell me what the old man was like," he said. "Did
you get his name?"

"Yes," said Akbar, "I got that. It was Simon
Iff."

Balloch dashed his glass upon the ground. "Oh hell! Oh hell!
Oh hell!" he said, not so much as a curse but as an invocation.
"Hear, oh hear this creature! The ignorant, blind swine! You had
him -- Him! -- under your hand; oh hell, you fool, you fool!"

I felt sure he was somebody," said Akbar, "but I had no
orders."

"And no brains, no brains," snarled the other.
"Look here; I'll tell you how to get your step in the Lodge if
you'll give me a hundred pounds."

"Do you mean it?" cried Akbar, entirely his own man in
a moment, for abject fear and obsessing ambition combined to make his
advancement the tyrant of his whole tormented mind. "Will you swear
it?" [119]

Balloch made an ugly face. "By the black sow's udder, I
will."

His whole frame trembling with excitement, Akbar Pasha drew a
cheque-book from his pocket, and filled in a blank for the required sum.

Balloch snatched it greedily. "This is worth your
money," he said. "That man Iff is in the second grade, perhaps
even the first, of their dirty Order; and we sometimes think he's the
most powerful of the whole damned crew. That fool Grey's a child to him.
I know now how the Watcher was destroyed. Oh! S.R.M.D. will pay somebody
for this! But listen, man -- you bring that old beast's head on a
charger -- or Grey's, either! -- and you can have any grade you dare ask
for! And that's no lie, curse it! Why," he went on with increasing
vehemence, "the whole thing's a plant of ours. Monet-Knott's one of
us; we use him to blackmail Lavinia King -- about all he's fit for, the
prig! And we got him to drag that dago woman in front of Master Grey's
dog nose! And now they
bring in Simon Iff. Oh, it s too much! We've even lost their trail. Ten
to one they're safe in their Abbey to-night. Be off! No, wait for me
here; I'll bring back orders. And while I'm gone, get that son of yours
here -- he's got more sense than you. We'll have to trace Grey somehow
-- and astral watchers won't do the trick when Simon Iff's about."

Balloch rose to his feet, buttoned his coat around him, put on a
tall silk hat, and was gone without wasting another word upon his
subordinate.

The Turk would have given his ears to have dared to follow him.
The mystery of S.R.M.D.'s personality and abode were shrouded in the
blackest secrecy. Akbar had but the vaguest ideas of the man; he was a
formless ideal of terrific power and knowledge, a sort of incarnated
Satan, the epitome of successful [120] iniquity. The episode of the
"Watcher" had not diminished the chief's prestige in his eyes;
it was evidently an "accident"; S.R.M.D.
had sent out a patrol and it had been ambushed by a whole division, as
it were. So trivial a "regrettable incident" was negligibly
normal.

Akbar had no thought but of S.R.M.D. as a Being infinitely great
in himself; he had no conception of the price paid by the members of the
Black Lodge. The truth is, that as its intimates advance, their power
and knowledge becomes enormously greater; but such progress is not a
mark of general growth, as it is in the case of the White Brotherhood;
it is like a cancer, which indeed grows apace, but at the expense of the
man on whom it feeds, and will destroy both him and itself in the long
run. The process may be slow; it may extend over a series of
incarnations; but it is sure enough. The analogy of the cancer is a
close one; for the man knows his doom, suffers continual torture; but to
this is added the horrible delusion that if only the disease can be
induced to advance far enough, all is saved. Thus he hugs the fearful
growth, cherishes it as his one dearest possession, stimulates it by
every means in his power. Yet all the time he nurses in his heart an
agonizing certainty that this is the way of death.

Balloch knew S.R.M.D. well; had known him for years. He hoped to
supplant him, and while he feared him with hideous and unmanly fear,
hated him with most hellish hatred. He was under no delusion as to the
nature of the Path of the Black Lodge. Akbar Pasha, a mere outsider,
without a crime on his hands as yet, was a rich and honoured officer in
the service of the Sultan; he, Balloch, was an ill-reputed doctor,
living on the fears of old maids, on doubtful and even criminal services
to foolish people from the supply of morphia to the suppression of [121]
the evidence of scandal, and on the harvest of half-disguised blackmail
that goes with such pursuits. But he was
respectability itself compared to S.R.M.D.

This man, who called himself the Count Macgregor of Glenlyon, was
in reality a Hampshire man, of lowland Scottish extraction, of the name
of Douglas. He had been well educated, became a good scholar, and
developed an astounding taste and capacity for magic. For some time he
had kept straight; then he had fallen, chosen the wrong road. His powers
had increased at a bound; but they were solely used for base ends. He
had established the Black Lodge far more firmly than ever before,
jockeyed his seniors out of office by superior villainy, and proceeded
to forge the whole weapon to his own liking. He had had one terrible
set-back.

Cyril Grey, when only twenty years of age, a free-lance magician,
had entered the Lodge; for it worked to attract innocent people under a
false pretence of wisdom and of virtue. Cyril, discovering the trick,
had not withdrawn; he had played the game of the Lodge, and made himself
Douglas's right-hand man. This being achieved, he had suddenly put a
match to the arsenal.

The Lodge was always seething with hate; Theosophists themselves
might have taken lessons from this exponent; and the result of Cyril's
intervention had been to disintegrate the entire structure. Douglas
found his prestige gone, and his income with it. Addiction to drink,
which had accompanied his magical fall, now became an all-absorbing
vice. He was never able to rebuild his Lodge on its former lines; but
those who thirsted for knowledge and power and these he still possessed
in ever increasing abundance as he himself decayed -- clung to him,
hating and envying him, as a young ruffian of the [122] streets will
envy the fame of some robber or murderer who happens to fill the public
eye.

It was with this clot of perverse feelings that Balloch
approached the Rue Quincampoix, one of the lowest streets in Paris, and
turned in at the den where Douglas lodged.

S.R.M.D. was lying on a torn soiled sofa, his face white as
death; a mottled and empurpled nose, still showing trace of its original
aggressive and haughty model, alone made for colour. For his eyes were
even paler than the doctor's. In his hand was a bottle half full of raw
whisky, with which he was seeking to restore his vitality.

"I brought you some whisky," said Balloch, who knew the
way to favour.

"Put it down, over there. You've got some money."

Balloch did not dare to lie. S.R.M.D. had spotted the fact
without a word.

Only a cheque. You shall have half to-morrow when I've cashed
it."

"Come here at noon.

Despite the obvious degradation of his whole being, S.R.M.D. was
still somebody. He was a wreck, but he was the wreck of something
indubitably big. He had not only the habit of command, but the tone of
fine manners. In his palmy days he had associated with some very highly
placed people. It was said that the Third Section of the Russian Police
Bureau had once found a use for him.

"Is the Countess at home?" asked Balloch, apparently in
courtesy.

"She's on the Boulevard. Where else should she be, at this
time of night?"

It was the vilest thing charged against that vile parody of a
man, his treatment of his wife, a young, beautiful, talented, and
charming girl, the sister of [123] a famous Professor at the Sorbonne.
He had delighted to reduce her to the bedraggled street-walker that she
now was.

Nobody knew what Douglas did with his money. The contributions of
his Lodge were large; blackmail and his wife's earnings aided the
exchequer; he had probably a dozen other sources of income. Yet he never
extricated himself from his sordidness; and he was always in need of
money. It was no feigned need, either; for he was sometimes short of
whisky.

The man's knowledge of the minds of others was uncanny; he read
Balloch at a gesture.

"Grey never struck the Watcher," he said; "it was
not his style; who was it?"

"Simon Iff."

"I shall see to that."

Balloch understood that, though S.R.M.D. feared Iff and loathed
him, his great preoccupation was with Cyril Grey. He hated the young
magician with a perfect hatred; he would never forget his ruin at those
boyish hands. Also, he forgave nothing, from a kindness to an insult; he
was malignant for the sake of malice.

"They will have gone over to their house on Montmartre," continued Douglas, in a voice of absolute certitude.
"We must have the exits watched by Abdul Bey and his men. But I
know what Grey will do as well as if he had told me; he will bolt
somewhere warm for his damned honeymoon. You and Akbar watch the Gare de
Lyon.
Now, look here! with a bit of luck, we'll finish off this game; I'm
weary of it. Mark me well!"

Douglas rose. The whisky he had drunk was impotent to affect him,
head or legs. He went over to a small table on which were painted
certain curious figures. He took a saucer, poured some [124] whisky into
it, and dropped a five-franc piece into the middle. Then he began to
make weird gestures, and to utter a long conjuration, harsh-sounding,
and apparently in gibberish. Lastly, he set fire to the whisky in the
saucer. When it was nearly burnt through, he blew it out. He took the
coin, wrapped it in a piece of dark-red silk, and gave it to his pupil.

"When Grey boards a traiin," he ordered, "go up to
the engine-driver, give him this, and tell him to drive carefully. Let
me know what the fellow looks like; get his name, if you can; say you
want to drink his health. Then come straight here in a cab."

Balloch nodded. The type of magic proposed was familiar enough to
him. He took the coin and made off.

At the Sign of the Tranquil Father, Akbar was awaiting him with
his son Abdul Bey. The latter was in charge of the Turkish Secret
Service in Paris, and he did not hesitate to use the facilities thus at
his disposal to his own magical advancement. All his resources were
constantly at the service of Balloch. Now that S.R.M.D. himself was
employing him, he was beside himself with pride and pleasure.

Balloch gave his instructions. An hour later the house where Lisa
was even then undergoing her ordeal would be surrounded by spies;
additional men would be placed at all the big terminals of Paris; for
Abdul Bey meant to do the thing thoroughly. He would not take a chance;
for all his fanatical faith in Douglas, he thought it prudent to provide
against the possibility of an error in the chief's occult calculations.
Also, his action would prove
his zeal. Besides, Cyril might deliberately lay a false trail -- was
almost sure to play some trick of the sort.

Balloch and Akbar Pasha were stationed in a [125] restaurant
facing the Gare de Lyon, ready to answer the telephone at any
moment." Now," said Abdul, "Have you photographs of these
people to show my men?"

Balloch produced them.

"I've seen this man Grey somewhere," remarked the young
Turk casually. And then he gave a sudden and terrible cry. In Lisa he
recognized an unknown woman whom he had admired the year before
at a dance -- and whom he had craved ever since. "Tell
S.R.M.D.," he roared, "that I'm in this thing for life or
death; but I ask the girl for a trophy."

"You'll get that, or anything else," said Balloch,
"if you can put an end to the activities of Mr. Cyril Grey."

Abdul Bey rushed off without another word spoken; and Balloch and
the Pasha went to the rendezvous appointed. They passed that night and
the next day in alternate bouts of drink and sleep. About half-past
eight on the following evening the telephone rang. Douglas had judged
rightly; the lovers had arrived at the Gare de Lyon.

Balloch and his pupil sprang to life -- fresh and vigorous at the
prick of the summons to action.

It was easy to mark the tall figure of the magician, with the
lovely girl upon his arm; at the barrier their distinction touched the
humanity of the collector. Tickets through to Rome -- and no luggage!
Most evidently an elopement!

With romantic sympathy, the kind man determined to oppose the
passage of Balloch, whom he supposed to he an angry father or an
outraged husband. But the manner of the Englishman disarmed him;
besides, he had a ticket to Dijon.

Concealing himself as best he could, the doctor walked rapidly to
the head of the train. There, assuming the character of a timid old man,
he [126] implored the driver, with the gift of the bewitched
"cart-wheel," to be sure to drive carefully. He would drink
the good fellow's health, to be sure -- what name? Oh! Marcel Dufour.
"Of the furnace -- that is appropriate!" laughed the genial
passenger, apparently reassured as to his security.

But he did not enter the train. He dashed out of the station, and
into a motor-cab, overjoyed to return to Douglas with so clean a record
of work accomplished.

He never gave the Turk another thought.

But Akbar Pasha had had an idea. Balloch had taken a ticket for
Dijon -- he would take one, too. And he would go -- he would retrieve
his error of yesterday. He was not in the least afraid of that cub Grey,
when Simon Iff was not there to back him. It would go hard, but he
should get a drop of Lisa's blood -- if he had to bribe the wagon-lit
man. Then -- who knows? -- there might even be a chance to kill Grey. He
waited till the last moment before he boarded the train.

The train would stop at Moret-les-Sablons; by that time the beds
would be made up; he would have plenty of time to act; he could go on to
Rome if necessary.

Cyril Grey, away from the influence of Simon Iff, had become the
sarcastic sphinx once more. He was wearing a travelling suit with
knickerbockers, but he still affected the ultra-pontifical diplomatist.

"The upholstery of these cars is revolting," he said to
Lisa, with a glance of disgust. And he suddenly opened the door away
from the platform and lifted her on to the permanent way; thence into a
stuffy compartment in the train that was standing at the next
"Voie."

"A frosty moonlight night like this," he said, pulling
a large black pipe from his pocket and filling [127] it, "indicates
(to romantic lovers like ourselves) the propriety of a descent at Moret,
a walk to Barbizon through the forest, a return to Moret by a similar
route in a day or so, and the pursuance of our journey to Naples. See
Naples and die!" he added musingly, "decidedly a superior
programme."

Lisa would have listened to a proposition to begin their travels
by swimming the Seine, on the ground that the day after to-morrow would
be Friday; so she raised no objection. But she could not help saying
that they would have reached Moret more quickly by the rapide.

"My infant child!" he returned; " the celebrated
Latin poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus has observed, for our edification
and behoof, 'Festina lente.' This epigram has been translated by a
famous Spanish author, 'manana.' Dante adds his testimony to truth in
his grandiose outburst, 'Domani.' Also, an Arab philosopher, whom I
personally revere, remarks, if we may trust the assertion of Sir Richard
Francis Burton, K.C.M.G. -- and why should
we not? -- 'Conceal thy tenets, thy treasure, and thy travelling!' This
I do. More so," he concluded cryptically, "than you
imagine!"

They were still waiting for their local funeral (which the French
grandiloquently describe as a train) to start when Dr. Balloch returned
radiant to the Rue Quincampoix.

Douglas was on the alert to receive him. The news took only a
second to communicate.

"Marcel Dufour!" cried S.R.M.D. "We shall drink
for him, as he may not drink on duty."

He carefully opened two bottles of whisky, mixed the stale spirit
in the magic saucer with their contents, and bade Balloch join him at
the table.

"Your very good health, Marcel Dufour!" cried Douglas.
"And mind you drive carefully!" [128] Balloch and he now set
to work steadily to drain the two bottles -- a stiff nip every minute --
but the stuff had no effect on them. It was far otherwise with the man
on the engine.

Almost before he had well left Paris behind him, he began to fret
about the furnace, and told his fireman to keep up the fullest head of
steam. At Melun the train should have slackened speed; instead, it
increased it. The signalman at Fontainebleau was amazed to see the rapide rush through the station, eight minutes ahead of time,
against the signals. He saw the driver grappling with the fireman, who
was thrown from the foot-plate a moment
after, but escaped with a broken leg.

"My mate went suddenly mad," the injured man explained
later. "He held up a five-franc piece which some old gentleman had
given him, and swore that
the devil had promised him another if he made Dijon in two hours. (And,
as you know, it is five, what horror!)."

He grew afraid, saw the signals set at danger, and sprang to the
lever. Then that poor crazed Dufour had thrown him off the train.

The guard was new to that section of the line, and so, no doubt,
too timid to take the initiative; he certainly should have applied the
brakes, even at Melun.

An hour later Cyril Grey and Lisa and all their fellow passengers
were turned out at Fontainebleau. There had been a terrible disaster to
the Paris-Rome rapide at
Moret. The line would be blocked all night.

"This contretemps," said Cyril, as if he had heard of a
change of programme at a theatre, "will add appreciably to the
length -- and, may I add, to the romance -- of our proposed walk.

When they reached Moret more than three hours [129] later, they
found the rapide inextricably
tangled with a heavy freight train. It had left the line at the curve
and crashed into the slower train. Cyril Grey had still a surprise in
store. He produced a paper of some sort from his pocket, which the
officer of the police cordon received in the manner of the infant Samuel
when overwhelmed by the gift of prophecy. He made way for them with
proud deference.

They had not to walk far before the magician found what he was
seeking. Beneath the ruins of the rear compartment were the remains of
the late Akbar Pasha.

"I wonder how that happened," he said. "However,
here is a guess at your epitaph: 'a little learning is a dangerous
thing.' I think, Lisa, that we should sup at the Cheval Blanc before we
start our walk to Barbizon. It is a long way, especially at night, and
we want to cut away to the west so as to avoid Fontainebleau, for the
sake of the romance of the thing."

Lisa did not mind whether she supped at the White Horse, or on
one. She realized that she had hold of a man of strength, wisdom, and
foresight, far more than a match for their enemies.

He stopped to speak to the officer in charge of the cordon as
they passed him. "Among the dead: Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Grey. English
people. No flowers. Service of the minister."

The officer promised to record the lie officially. His deference
was amazing. Lisa perceived that her lover had been at the pains to arm
himself with more than one kind of weapon.

Lisa pressed his arm, and murmured her appreciation of his
cleverness.

"It won't deceive Douglas for two minutes, if he be, as I
suspect, the immediate Hound of the Baskervilles, but he may waste some
time rejoicing [130] over my being such an ass as to try it; and that's
always a gain."

Lisa began to wonder whether her best chance of ever saying the
right thing would not be to choose the wrong. His point of view was
always round the corner of her street! [131]